Dessert Lasagna Is Not All The Rage, Please Don’t Make It

Dessert Lasagna Is Not All The Rage, Please Don’t Make It

So here I am looking for lasagna-related news, a regular day at the office, and I come across a recipe for peppermint white chocolate lasagna billed as a “delicious winter treat.” Not only does this sound like as much of a winter treat as a polar cyclone bomb (or whatever it was we just survived), there’s no such thing as dessert lasagna, it’s definitely not all the rage and what on earth has happened to dessert?

I feel the way about this trend the same way I feel about dump cakes, poke cakes, garbage cakes and every other mean thing you could call a cake. Like dessert lasagna, for example. Some recipes for dessert lasagna call for actual lasagna noodles. That’s like calling doughnuts “sugar bagels” and serving them dusted with dehydrated onion fragments. Layered desserts already had names that weren’t living insults to another country’s well-known baked pasta dish. Use an existing term for formally or casually layered confection — parfait, trifle, tiramisu, mess, millefeuille, Napoleon, fool, even “bake” — or just make up a new word entirely. “I brought brownie brittle and strawberry loopnova,” and “let’s get this Oreo cheesecake bopster into the fridge,” would be welcome phrases to hear at any dinner gathering.

Now I get that this sounds like an extended game of “tomato, tomahto.” I also realize that I’ve staunchly defended calling the vegan versions of things by their mainstream names. Loading hearts of palm salad into a hot dog bun, however, is not the same as pouring all your leftover Christmas candy into a nonstick pan with Cool Whip, instant pudding mix and frosting and serving up slices of the resulting “various sugary things bopster” to your guests.

The understated simplicity of a sheet of freshly baked cookies made with the very best butter you can find (even homemade!), or a pint of ultra-premium local ice cream eliminates the instant confusion associated with someone hearing “dessert lasagna” for the first time in their life. Please, for the love of normal, well-established desserts, go with anything else.